Something a little different (3)

Yesterday I explained how I made the conversion from RAW file to TIFF file using Lightroom 3. Today I will explain the steps I used in Photoshop CS3 to create the final image.

Step 1 – I examine the image and remove any dust spots I can find that might have been present on the camera sensor. I make the clean up using the healing brush rather than the clone tool as I find it makes an excellent blend.

Step 2 – The contrast is a little low so I boost it with a curves layer taking care not to make the image too dark. When doing this I make the adjustment too strong and then reduce it by lowing the opacity of the layer. This helps me control the contrast adjustment better than trying to get it right first time.

Step 3 – I add a Warm-Up Photo filter as the image is a little too cold after all. This gives the sky slightly more orange tones.

Step 4 – I dodge and burn the image to darken some areas but highlight the lighter areas of light on the water. My approach to dodge and burn is to use a new layer filled with 50% gray and then set the layers blend mode to Overlay. You can then paint onto the layer with black to darken an area or white to lighten it. If you’re not familiar with this I suggest checking out the tutorials section of my site.

Step 5 – I boost the image saturation by adding a saturation layer but then use a layer mask to hide this. I use a soft edged brush to paint in the saturation by painting on the mask with white.

When I am finished I flatten my image and resize it to the final print size. The great thing about this image is that I can resize it to almost any size as it doesn’t need to be sharp. Whilst it was only shot on a 10Mpixel camera I can easily print it at 200ppi rather than the more usual 300ppi. I tend to do my resizing in an application called Genuine Fractals and with this image I could easily make huge wall prints without fear of quality issues.

I hope you enjoyed this short series. If you aren’t sure about some of the techniques I used, you will find them all under the Tutorial section of the site. Also, if you haven’t done so yet I would suggest signing up to the free Photo Guide as this will walk you through in great detail how I created one of my most popular images.